Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday January 04, 2010 @10:11AM
from the i-don't-recognize-it-now dept.

alphadogg writes "As they imagine the Internet of 2020, computer scientists across the country are starting from scratch and re-thinking everything: from IP addresses to DNS to routing tables to Internet security in general. They're envisioning how the Internet might work without some of the most fundamental features of today's ISP and enterprise networks. Their goal is audacious: To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management. Researchers are trying to build an Internet that's more reliable, higher performing and better able to manage exabytes of content. And they're hoping to build an Internet that extends connectivity to the most remote regions of the world, perhaps to other planets. This high-risk, long-range Internet research will kick into high gear in 2010, as the US federal government ramps up funding to allow a handful of projects to move out of the lab and into prototype. Indeed, the United States is building the world's largest virtual network lab across 14 college campuses and two nationwide backbone networks so that it can engage thousands – perhaps millions – of end users in its experiments."

Get real,
in 2020 we might just have IPV6 to your local PC. Probably with all the consoles, games, etc that require IPV4 even this is optomistic. (I know many of you will have IPV6 end to end, but I mean for the average Joe)

"I think it's, "there will be no computing devices of any kind on this new Internet."

At least none that don't have full support for governmental control.

I'm afraid with this newly designed, improved internet...that a major side effect is that it will become less free, and more controlled. What makes the current internet great IS the freedom you have on there. If you work at it, you can still be anonymous. You can connect your computer and become a true peer with anyone else in the world. You can set up your own server (ok, these days you generally have to get a business account, but that's not THAT bad for $$) and you can publish to your hearts content.

These very things that make the current form of the internet so remarkable and useful...are the very things most governments (even the US government which should not be freedom suppressing, but, currently likes to be) absolutely hate....and I'm sure are very sorry they didn't see coming. They can't put the genie back in the bottle, but, I guarantee you that they WILL be working for more controls in the 'new' internet. Yep, along with all that 'security' will come traceability, even better storage of data on the individual, etc.

Frankly, I prefer to take my chances on the "Wild West" model of the internet rather than have more control placed on a better version. I keep wondering in the end who it will be better for? I don't think the answer to that is the common end user.

Hey, I would just like to see encryption techniques switch over to one of the methods that have been mathematically proven unbreakable instead of continuing to rely on the primes method which still has that Riemann hypothesis staring at it.

Hey, I would just like to see encryption techniques switch over to one of the methods that have been mathematically proven unbreakable instead of continuing to rely on the primes method which still has that Riemann hypothesis staring at it.

There are no techniques that have been mathematically proven unbreakable (one time pad excepted). You are thinking of quantum encryption, which requires hardware.

For pedants, yes quantum physics is a mathematical construct, but they are relying on actual physical particles conforming to these rules - which is still under debate. Quantum uncertainty in our universe could be part of a deterministic system in higher dimensions.

The problem is the difference between "provably secure" in theory and practice. From recent news Schneier's blog [schneier.com] reports on a quantum encryption system that was provably secure that has been broken.

like a central cert that uses a crazy large public key system to communicate a symmetric key and they require proof of residence and you use this system to say "I refuse to connect to anyone that doesn't use one of these signed certs".

Add a 3 strikes clause to having your cert revoked and a 5 year renewal. Your ISP catches you as part of a bot-net 3 times, you cert gets deactivated. In order to reactivate your cert, you must pay a certified company like "Best Buy" or any one willing to get certified, to cle

Get real, the aim is to create a croporately-controlled network on the server-client model. The “new”, “improved” intertubes will be stritly one-way, and will incorporate DRM down to the packet level to make sure that the croporate masters get paid for every shred of content consumed by the great unwashed masses.

Conversely, the aim may be to create a government-controlled network on the server-client model, where the "new," "improved" intertubes no longer provide even the slightest hint of anonymity and will incorporate inspection down to the packet level to make sure that the government "anti-terrorist" agencies get to inspect every subversive thought of the great unwashed masses.

Basically, whether you're a "big corporations are ruining America" lefty, or a "Obama is reading my email" right-winger, there's something for everyone to hate here. And just because someone has an outrageous theory about a conspiracy (on the right or left) that doesn't necessarily rule a conspiracy out.

As I came to the end of the article, I saw...
"You are not logged in.... or post as Anonymous Coward."
I wonder, with all these fancy features and identity management, will the veil of anonymity on the internet be removed?
Internet censorship has always been limited because the internet as we know it makes it hard with its anonymity and proxies, etc.
The question is will a government-funded internet make big-brother-ing easier?

The internet is based on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) [wikipedia.org] a military research project to use packet switching over a network instead of circuit switching. I doubt they envisioned it becoming so innocuous. It wasn't until Tim Berners-Lee [wikipedia.org] introduced HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) and subsequently released it royalty free that the Internet's World Wide Web was born. And the rest, as they say, is history. This "new" internet initiative is probably to try and put the genie back in the bottle.

The "Web" had nothing to do with the expansion of the internet other than providing a "killer app" that most ordinary people would be willing to use. The "internet" was growing very well without HTTP and HTML, including sharing documents and providing methods for people to download/upload materials.

It annoys me to no end when I see people who should know better to make the assumption internet==web.

One funny experience I had was at Comdex when I cornered "salesman" trying to sell some set-top box that would

The "Web" had nothing to do with the expansion of the internet other than providing a "killer app" that most ordinary people would be willing to use.

That's like saying desktop publishing had nothing to do with Apple becoming the De facto standard for graphic designers in the 80's other than providing a "killer app" that designer's would be willing to use. While the Internet was well on it's way to a bright future to say HTTP had nothing to do with it's success is just plain denial.

And Al Gore actually had a lot to do with changing the Internet from being a few universities, government agencies, and big businesses into a tool that gazillions of people use. Say what you will about his other political stances, but he deserves quite a bit of credit for his work in the Senate that makes it clear he thought the geeks had a very good thing going.

Well, since IPv6 supposedly does away with the need to use NAT, it's perfectly likely that you can be tracked more effectively via your device's IP address, unless you can find effective measures to avoid that.

Not only does it 'supposedly do away' with the need, those supporting it also make using NAT out as blasphemous. THAT makes me a bit skeptical.

Security and identity management doesn't imply loss of privacy. If things are done right, you can make up an identity any time you want. Your bank won't trust that identity at first, but that's a feature, not a bug.

If the future Internet is developed in an apolitical, academic context like the current one was, we'll be fine. If corporate interests and security-obsessed regimes are able to lobby for certain "features," though, distorting the process, then we're in for some major problems.

The problem is that they didn't develop the current Internet for everyone, it didn't even occur to them that people outside of a very limited scope would even be interested in the Internet. Everyone knows that the "new" Internet will be for everyone, so there is no way that political and corporate interests will let it develop without trying to influence it.

Hmmm... let me check. How many academic, apolitical non-commercial internet sites do I visit a day....

Going through all my bookmarks....

Zero

None

Nada

Even/. displays ads. So without corporate/commercial interests getting involved, it will be missing features they need, and those entities will find dozens of work-arounds that won't work the same in every browser and cause it to need to be done it all over again in another couple of decades or so.

If I were to completely design this system I would use ID cards digitally signed by the government with a proper public-private encryption scheme, but with multiple levels of information. The legislation around these cards should account for the information categories and what companies can legally do with it. The levels should have clear names and colors, and when you sign in to a website you will *never* need a login anymore, only an ID, and the websi

These are problems that exist for every form of identification... currently creditcards online (but also your ID offline). The fact that you can abuse stolen creditcards to get cash doesn't help to combat the extensive abuse... so you need a system that is *only* for identifying yourself.

You basically say: I am this person, and here is the signed certificate that proves it. And if i'm not this person you can be sure that the person you're dealing with has my ID card (and it's probably stolen).

You basically say: I am this person, and here is the signed certificate that proves it. And if i'm not this person you can be sure that the person you're dealing with has my ID card (and it's probably stolen).

Actually what you're saying is: "I am this person, or a thief with this person's card, or a hacker with access to this person's data or a hacker with access to your data to compare with this person's or the guy who manipulated the master database last month or the guy who hacked this person's ISP, or this person's cable guy/maid or this person's son or a russian mathematician who found a flaw in your identification system."

Which is a degree of security perfectly achievable by the current internet.

When a government signed your ID to prove that you are Nadaka, how will that help them limit your freedom?
You can only use it to add the 'this is Nadaka for sure' to your account.
It will only become a problem when Slashdot requires you to prove who you are with this method and then maintains a list of people not allowed to post by the govenment... but the whole point is that you can have levels of anonimity.

"how will that help them limit your freedom?" Suppose you have knowledge that incriminates a corrupt government. Post it without anonymity and they may kill you, don't and you get to live but your freedom of speech has been limited. Its an extreme case, but it happens. Do you think "deep throat" would have been uncensored and unscathed if his identity had been known?

"To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management."

I see. They want to end the real protection of free speach that anonymity provides.

What I found lacking in the article was an actual discussion of how they were going to make security better. At the end, there was a brief mention of content-centric networking [wikipedia.org] which -- I must admit -- sounds like it doesn't solve any security issues. There's all these generic complaints of security and how horrible it is. In the article, when they talk about reinventing the internet they say things like:

NSF says it won't make the same mistake today as was made when the Internet was invented, with security bolted on to the Internet architecture after-the-fact instead of being designed in from the beginning.

I frankly don't get it. And since they're not giving me examples of how they're going to revolutioni

They also want "content-centric networking" where all content is identified and controlled. Even "an alternative architecture that removes the intelligence from switches and routers and places these smarts in an external controller", your router or switch is no longer your own but controlled and remotely programmed by others.

The article stinks of creating an internet that matches the 20th century media model, where a handful and rich and greedy decide what is to be presented as the majority opinion. The struggle was to be expected, after all you can have the uncontrolled masses sharing and discussing there opinions.

Here's betting that their controlled, censored, monitored, restricted, "Big Brother" network dies on the drawing board, as the majority seek to protect their thoughts and opinions.

You are right, I had not commented about that part. You wouldn't want people putting unvetted video, audio, pictures they recorded themselves because there may be a copyrighted song or spine of a popular book barely audible/visible in the background. I am sure people will be allowed to upload such things if they are willing to sign over ownership and control of the original work to a "trusted" authority.

Another radical proposal to change the Internet infrastructure is content-centric networking, which is being developed at PARC.... Instead of using IP addresses to identify the machines that store content, content-centric networking uses file names and URLs to identify the content itself.

Kind of like how the Web works.

We're trying to work around the fact that machines-talking-to-machines isn't important anymore. Moving content is really important.

Which is done by machines-talking-to-machines.

Peer-to-peer networks, content distribution networks, virtual servers and storage are all trying to get around this fact.

Actually, no, they're the methods you'll have to use to build your utopian Internet, even if you hide it behind a new name. Also, how do virtual servers get around that fact?

Jacobson proposes that content — such as a movie, a document or an e-mail message — would receive a structured name that users can search for and retrieve. The data has a name, but not a location, so that end users can find the nearest copy.

There's a name for that "name" -- a URI.

Now, maybe what they're proposing will improve things, but if so, it's going to be incremental -- it's still going to talk IP under the hood. The bold claim that we "won't recognize" the Internet, that this is a "radical idea", is unwarranted hype.

I mean, if I understand what they're actually proposing, the most radical interpretation I could give it is ideas that have already been in Freenet for years.

Indeed, because if there's one thing governments have stressed continually the last ten years it's that our privacy is paramount. When they're not invading it, recording it or leaving it lying around on trains, that is.

I, for one, reject the notion that the identity on my passport is more "real" than the one I post on Slashdot (and a few other sites) with. We should do away with the concept that having more than one identity is some kind of deception.

"Free speech without the need for anonymity is way better" agreed, if only it were the case. Sometimes you need to openly discuss something while retaining privacy, putting your name on questions about disease or sexuality could cost you your insurance, job, social status, family and even your life even in "the free west".

If you have something sufficiently important to say, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, you either need anonymity or the willingness to be sued, imprisoned or killed for what yo

In theory this is true, but even if somewhere in the world the perfect country (whatever that means, there are as many hypothetical perfect countries as people in the world) which acknowledged free speech there still would be a need for anonymous speech. There never has been a perfect country that has stayed perfect for very long, and there are still forces hostile to openness (corporations, foreign governments, radical groups (ala the Mohammed cartoon fiasco), etc... Within 50 years your perfect country

Only for the US, and only for certain kinds of speech, and if you are rich and famous enough to fight it in a court of law or public opinion, and only protected from the government unless someone claims it is a matter of national security.

It also protects your job, your social status and your life if you do not conform to the status quo. The first amendment only protects you from the government, not every consequence of expressing your freedom comes at the hands of the government. Nor can you fight a bullet in your head after the fact.

Indeed. Change only rarely comes from existing things being replaced by incompatible variations on the theme. Thats why MP3 is still the king of lossy compressed audio, why PNG never really took off as a mainstream image format, why ZIP is still the prefered archive format, and why Windows is still the #1 Operating System.

Many people dont know this, but the Internet was only one of many such similar networks started in the 60's and 70's. Tymenet and Telenet were some of the other alternatives being used e

I communicate via a handheld computer that can crack a variety of encryption schemes (more or less as many as the average single computer.) I get into my car and start it without ever taking the key out of my pocket (it knows I've got the key in my pocket when I hit the button on the door.) I have access to the greatest library ever constructed at the speed of light. Well, close enough for my purposes anyway.

People don't overestimate, they simply predict poorly what new wonders will come next.

The current internet installed base infrastructure that would need to be ripped out and replaced is so large that this kind of redesign will never happen. Change has to come in incremental steps, each with a significant, well identified payback. What's technically possible does not matter nearly as much as whether change will make or save money.

I have a sneaking suspicion that more security will lead to less internet freedom. Sure it'll be nice if you didn't have to worry about phishing sites or spam, but at what cost? A more secure internet means oppressive regimes can track dissidents. It means companies can track your behavior online, and well-meaning governments can limits legitimate freedoms.

I have a sneaking suspicion that more security will lead to less internet freedom. Sure it'll be nice if you didn't have to worry about phishing sites or spam, but at what cost? A more secure internet means oppressive regimes can track dissidents. It means companies can track your behavior online, and well-meaning governments can limits legitimate freedoms.

Except that you will still have to worry about phishing sites and spam, but the government and companies will be able to track your online behavior (unless you have stolen someone else's identity) in detail. Oh yeah, it will also be harder to find info that the governemtn doesn't want you to know.

I think the real key is considering how we get there from here. The ideas are nice, laudable goals -- and maybe even needed -- but they won't happen unless there's a pathway to get to them from today's Internet. Like a chemical reaction, even if the end result is lower energy than the starting reagents, nothing will happen if the work function separating the two is too high.

It's not the Internet switching fabric that is the problem, it's the end nodes. None of our PCs is provably secure. It's highly likely it won't be by 2020 either, as it appears the money is going into the wrong places in research. Capability Based Security [wikipedia.org] has been around since the 1980s, and yet it's not even being funded to try to get it ready for widespread use by 2020.

Until the ends of the internet are secure, it's not going to be secure. It almost seems the money is always being spent in places where it won't really help the end user, but will allow more control by the authorities. (Or maybe I'm just a bit paranoid?)

Actually, it's not the whole system that has to be inviolate, just the kernel. There are projects to produce a provable L4 microkernel, for example. This would allow the user to have a machine that they could then trust to only give away resources they chose.

Don't confuse a locked down kernel with a locked down computer. With the current OS selections you have, it's not possible to make a distiction, but it doesn't have to be this way. The problem boils down to the default permissive environment that we're all used to thinking and modeling our systems on top of. Capability based systems are a default deny environment, but you are free to give away as much as you want to a program of your choice.

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This is the part I worry about, it sounds like what the **AA's would love to have, an Internet without anonymity, one where everything is trusted.

Much like the trusted computing module put onto motherboards, I simply can't have faith in "trusted" Internet. Remember your TPM has nothing to with you being able to trust anyone, and everything to do with you not being trusted with your own computer.

The model we're using today is just wrong. It can't be made to work. We need a much more information-oriented view of security, where the context of information and the trust of information have to be much more central."

It may not be the researchers intent, but this sounds a lot like a euphemism for centralized content licensing management. The Internet community has been burned to many times, with trust becoming a euphemism for DRM and licensing. These researchers need to understand, that if nothing else they are going to have an image problem, even if they have no intentions of centralizing content management. One way to further look into this to see if this indeed the case would be to look and see what companies are helping to bankroll the research. Depending on the company, they will expect (demand) that things are built in a manner that they would as resolving their licensing issues.

"Why, we could redefine everything, from a new addressing scheme to network management protocols, and we could define a software stack with specific functions performed by each level of the network code.. from packet construction to routing and switching! And get this... for flexibility, we'll allow each layer to communicate directly with its corresponding layer in another application! You'll be able to use the same network code for local shared memory communications and global internet communications! There'll be a new addressing scheme with no shortage of addresses, performance will be better than it currently is, and most of the problems related to security and routing of traffic will be solved!"

"Best of all, the new model for the network will be very logically organized, not the mishmash of software and standards that have organically evolved from the old ARPANet protocols and de facto standards. It will be easily understandable through common sense acronyms and simple models."

"It'll be so superior to what we have now that it's a no brainer.. everyone will obviously convert to it right away, with no one left behind."

"So, you should watch closely and start admiring the folks writing this standard now, and start teaching it to college students so they're prepared to deal with the New Internet when we're done."

If the internet is unrecognizable in 20 years it'll be because of some great innovation from a random guy in his college office, or someone working on a private project during spare moments at his job, or an amateur coder who works on an idea beyond the limit of sanity to turn vision into reality. It won't come from a bunch of bureacrats and government servants setting out to make "The New Internet (tm)".

And they're hoping to build an Internet that extends connectivity to the most remote regions of the world, perhaps to other planets.

What "other planets"? Occassionally people will talk about travelling to "other planets". What "planets" are they talking about?

You can't land on Jupiter, Saturn, Nepture or Uranus because they are just gas. Mercury has a temp of around 1100 C and Venus is 900 degrees with a sulfuric acid atmosphere and atmospheric pressure 90 times greater than earth.

So that just leaves Mars. So why don't they just say Mars instead of "other planets"?

While strictly speaking not planets, there are lots of other "heavenly bodies" that one might land on. The most obvious is Luna, although Titan and some of the other gas giant moons hold a degree of promise. Then there's the possibility of sending data to other planets but not to their surfaces - Venus' atmosphere may be hot and corrosive, but its orbital space is essentially clear. Suppose we wanted to send a manned orbital observation craft to Jupiter (for whatever reason) - would connecting it into this network not count as extending this Internet "to other planets"?

Being at another planet doesn't necessarily require landing on its surface, though this might be hard to imagine for surface-dwellers. There's been lots of speculation about building floating cities on Venus: the city would float on the dense atmosphere. Something similar could be done for gas giants; at a certain altitude, the gravity would probably equal Earth's. Human habitats could also exist in orbit around other planets or moons. And even on Mercury, people could live underground.

To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management.

We don't want that.

Researchers are trying to build an Internet that's more reliable, higher performing and better able to manage exabytes of content. And they're hoping to build an Internet that extends connectivity to the most remote regions of the world, perhaps to other planets

None of that has anything to with the first part of their statement. Changing protocols and changing packets won't change the fact that you need the physical hardware at the location. The current internet does not have a problem extending connectivity to the remote regions of the world, or even to other planets. The only thing stopping THAT is the physical wires, servers, switches, etc. that have to be set up.

Before you go on about limitted address space, keep in mind that if we pushed those kinds of projects (the second type) the more we'd be pushing towards IPv6 - and even now we have some silly workarounds like NAT. In fact, I think if they redesigned NAT so it wasn't so... annoying to use, we'd get more use out of that than any other internet protocol they are probably working on.

love the way how they pump up the stuff noone needs - exabytes of content, more 'reliability'. reliability of what, exactly ? reliable in which way, precisely ? it awfully resembles shitty catchphrases senators use to push their sinister private interest agendas in senate. 'good' abstract words which noone should object to - reliability.

'identity management'. what a nice way to say 'control'. its like naming a damned private interest feudal law Digital Millenium copyright act. now see, there's the phrase 'digital' in it and it also says 'millenium'. that cant be something bad right ?

so it goes like this. of course, unless we net people, eff and similar organizations starten up and take the initiative to create public opinion rather than waiting for some private interest to screw us all up by brainwashing the public.

We were all supposed to be residing in apartments in the sky and driving flying cars by now, weren't we? Seems to me future predictions always underestimate how long it will take to reach a certain milestone by a factor of 10 or more. And of course they miss completely the radical new developments--notice there's no Internet in "the Jetsons?"
With so many businesses relying on the Internet, it will be like pulling teeth to bring IPv6 to fruition, whether or not Windows Vista said it was ready for it.
I'm not saying these changes don't need to be made--of course they do. But with every business on Earth pulling in the other direction, I don't believe I'll see these changes in my lifetime.
Of course I would have said the same thing about seeing an African-American President, too...

"Indeed, the United States is building the world's largest virtual network lab across 14 college campuses and two nationwide backbone networks so that it can engage thousands – perhaps millions – of end users in its experiments."

There is still no way for me to buy something with cash on the internet. Cash is cash. It's money, in and of itself, divorced from my identity. No identity is necessary. I can buy something at the corner store, or the liquor store, or the gas station with cash; the cashier doesn't need to verify my identity to see if my money is "good". It doesn't matter; my cash spends the same as anyone else's. When I meet someone to buy something off craigslist, I don't NEED to check anyone's identity; only to see that they are holding a wad of cash. The cash will spend regardless of who they are. There is nothing like this on the internet. I have to pay via credit card, paypal, or something else. How about getting around to inventing digital cash?

And since cash is "just money", and the property of whoever is holding it at a particular time, why not invent identities which are themselves "just identities" in the same way? In one of the Terry Pratchett books, there were ID cards that were, inherently, identities of themselves. Nobody had to prove you were the "owner" of the identity. It didn't matter; it was a non-issue, just like nobody has to verify if you are the owner of a wad of cash. The card WAS the identity.

I still long for a True Names anonymous internet of pseudoannonymity, multiple online identities, digital cash and annonymising remailers.

Ha? You are talking about prepaid cash cards. They exist for a while now. A lot of places in the USA no less, like Walgreens (as Mom and pop as you get), sell them, and visa logoed cards too. slysoft uses it for their **aa averse customers for example.

To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management

Once it was possible to obtain a car (if you could afford it), sit at the wheel and roam about the countryside, feeling the wind in you hair and scaring the cows. Eventually this became so much the image of freedom that the theme from the "World of Motion" exhibit at EPCOT was called "It's fun to be free." Today you need to license the car (pay fee), license yourself (pay fee), maintain both licenses (pay fee pay fee), keep you car street legal (pay maintenance), learn and abide by an insane amount of legislation (and I don't know anybody who has never had a ticket, no matter how careful they are), pay insurance... Owning a car today is a chore, driving is a necessity but it's far from fun; the moment it becomes fun, you're breaking some law. I know, this protects everybody, blah blah blah, I agree. But it's not fun.

The same mindset, for similar reasons, is now being ported to the Internet. Good bye freedom, good bye fun. Hello taxes, licensing and obligations. Sad.

Unless it adds value to end users it will not be adopted. Works faster? Great. The US/Iranian/Russian government is now reading my emails in addition to google? Not so great.

What would be incredible, is if the US government could implement OpenID on all of their websites. Taxes are rolling around, couldn't they make a site that lets me file directly with them? Or one that lets me see every outstanding ticket i have in my fair city? These systems don't have to be the same to be integrated.

First, "...This high-risk, long-range Internet research will kick into high gear in 2010, as the US federal government ramps up funding to allow a handful of projects to move out of the lab and into prototype. Indeed, the United States is building the world's largest virtual network lab across 14 college campuses and two nationwide backbone networks so that it can engage..." Funny, I thought the US was collapsing and falling apart? Where's all the inv

Guaranteed, they won't increase real security, but they will increase security theatre.

Stuff that's very public, annoying, and utterly ineffective, like background and credit score checks as part of Cisco CCNA certification, maybe an official scarey looking badge or uniform for internet security personnel, maybe some very public raids against random citizens, etc.

Heres a thought... Americans used to be "citizens". Now we're merely "consumers". Maybe with the new internet we'll get a new name like "surfers".

Any "new" internet will be all nicely traceable and controlled. You'll need an ID to log in and your physical address will be in the international database. Your health inquiries will all be reported to the insurance guilds and if you make too much noise about the wrong politician/financial professional, your porn surfing habits will be accidently "discovered" and reported by a media owned "news" site.

The same people who watched Star Wars and wanted to build the Death Star are now working on turning The Matrix into reality.

This has been in the works for a while, driven by a collusion between security agencies and high tech industry. This is what they meant when they were "caught off guard" by 9/11, and decided to "wage war on the internet" as a response to dissent during Operation Iraqi Liberation. When the entire plot of America's next blatant power grab becomes common knowledge within a matter of weeks thanks to a free global individual communications medium, FBI agents with 486's could no longer successfully pull off the kind of false flag operations they could when television was dominant. They had to pick their donut-stuffed asses out of their plastic chairs and resort to the good old fashioned foot-work of personal attacks, disappearances and discrediting anyone who questions the official line to keep the blood money flowing.

Profit is of course the motive, but not profit for society at large, profit at your expense. The initial purpose is to enable more reliable monitoring of communications by making identification more reliable. Stick your smart-card enabled driver's-license-slash-food-stamp-card into a reader in order to access the internet. Copy a song or movie, or pose a sufficient threat to society, and your access can be revoked. Government are the only ones who might be motivated to pay for such a scheme, with no clear benefit to anyone but the types of delusional control freaks government attracts.

The next step will be to take everything you say or communicate electronically, and to use it against you. This is where the profit comes in. Your ideas are copied, stolen, and then black-holed. Your views are distorted. Everyone from your employer to your landlord to concerned parents would pay for information on you. Those who control it's collection will control it's perception and use, and profit from it. Your health insurance may be cancelled. Your boss may not recommend you for a raise. Your parents may decide to cut you out of their will. Your bank may reduce your credit limit. They will have no qualms about doing so. You will never see it coming. The information they base their decisions on comes from the government, and government is trusted. The information is thus trusted as well, thanks to step one above.

The final step is segmentation. The internet is no longer global. You get your own personal copy. Every search result you get and every website you go to is filtered and personalized. The internet is no longer your link to a larger world, but a fictional creation used to manipulate and control you. Freedom of speech is no longer liberating, but a jail for your mind. This will take a while. But it is coming. It's just targeted advertising for now, but wait ten years and see what it becomes with the Federal government picking up the tab.

Consider this: There is a $200 trillion financial derivatives market in the United States. At 3% growth, this represents $70,000/yr for each and every US household, nearly every dollar earned by working Americans. And it's already accounted for. They know you will spend it. They know to 99% certainty how you will spend it. And if they happen to be wrong, they will get bailed out. There is no room for error. There is no tolerance of paradigm-changing technologically innovative ideas. Every economic transaction is now backed by the force of government. And they have every incentive to increase their intrusion into and control over your everyday life.

My response is to be careful what you wish for. Sometimes it is better not to know whether the cat is dead or not.

Being 40+ years old now and watching technology my whole life starting computers at 7 it's something I am very in tune with.If you want to see how it's going to change in the future you can just extrapolate from the past.

First let's point out that the internet is a common method for moving datagrams (IP packets, block of data up to 1500 bytes at a time), much like the postal service ships individual letter. On top of this stream connections using (TCP) are created and most of what we see is built on this.The point is, there are no limitations over what can be sent, or the format.So telepresents, virtual reality, haptics, Remote control of UAV's, skys the limit on what can be sent over this network.

I remember the Internet clearly as it was 30 years ago. As a hacker breaking in to it was the most LEET thing you could do back in 1980.I wasn't till 1987 before I finally got my first legitimate access to the Internet.

Let me put a little time line down to put things in to perspective.

1969 CompuServe started.1972 C Programming Language invented.

1980 -- there was no TCP/IP even is was NCP, no unix servers and it was the DARPANET. It was all 300 Baud Modems! UUCP and Email was there.1983 BSD 4.2 Unix came out with first tcp/ip stack in . C++ first developed.
Modems and BBS's ruled at this time (sort of like when dinosaurs roamed the earth)1984 Apple Macintosh first released.1985 "thin" Ethernet first comes out (uses BNC Coax)1987 Perl released.1988 Linksys founded. First Internet Worm get's loose, create massive panic! (Robert Tappan Morris)